Rich visuals impress but it feels like we've been here before

The human-made virus that caused the apes' intelligence to increase, made humans stupid (or stupider) and took away their power of speech (which may or may not be a bad thing). They're now feral.

Apes and other primates have created their own civilisations, and divided into clans that live and work together.

We're introduced to the Eagle Clan - training eagles is a skill they've developed.

Noa (voiced by Owen Teague) is a chimpanzee, the son of Koro (Neil Sandilands), his clan's leader, and feels he can't live up to expectations. While he's out egg collecting with his friends Anaya (Travis Jeffery) and Soona (Lydia Peckham), things don't go too well for him.

But soon there's a much, much bigger problem. A coastal clan of apes, the Mask Clan, led by the ambitious bonobo Proximus Caesar, invades Noa's peaceful community. They kill many - including Koro - and capture the rest. Proximus claims to be acting in the spirit of the long-deceased Caesar but he's a dictator rather than a visionary, twisting his predecessor's words and memory to suit himself.

The devastated Noa, who survived, pulls himself together and goes after them to rescue what's left of his clan. During his journey, he encounters the sage-like orangutan Raka (Peter Macon) and a young woman who's been following Noa. They dub her Nova (Freya Allen), a name that's popped up before in the Apes saga.

Noa is wary of Nova but Raka advises compassion and they bring her along. Things get even more complicated and dangerous as the extent of Proximus's ambition is revealed.

Writer Josh Friedman has plenty of experience in sci-fi and fantasy - previous credits include War of the Worlds and Avatar movies - and director Wes Ball knows his way around dystopian futures, having helmed the Maze Runner movies. The movie is, like quite a few these days, a mix of live action with motion capture and CGI, and those elements are combined very effectively.

While the film is good to look at, and has effective moments, including some impressive action scenes, it falls a little flat. There's a lot of gradual build-up and then a bunch of things happen late in the piece. World-building is fine but the world presented feels like we've been there before, a mix of earlier Apes and Avatar with a little Lion King thrown in too. And potentially interesting ideas go unexplored.

Noa is a character who develops as the film goes on and Nova reveals a surprise or two about herself. The other human of note is Trevathan (William H. Macy), who's thrown his lot in with the apes and teaches Proximus history. Reading is apparently a skill the apes haven't mastered though they can speak. But at times their pauses in sentences. Become irritating.

And, inevitably, room is left for yet another instalment.